The Low-Intensity Media Campaign and a Vote That Comes from Far Back

Abstract

In the light of two passionate and high-intensity media competitions such as the ones that took place in 2001 and 2006, the 2008 campaign seemed much less lively and engaging. Though several observers (Diamanti, 2008; Feltrin and Natale, 2008; Ignazi, 2008; Mannheimer and Natale, 2008) have suggested that the 2008 election will turn out to have been a genuinely critical one, there was no hard media campaigning in the immediate run up to it. As we shall see in the following paragraphs, this was true both from the standpoint of journalistic coverage (which was, on the whole, minimal and lacked prominence) and with regard to politicians’ use of the media (which was limited and less exciting than in other cases). The result was that, after a notably lacklustre campaign, nobody expected that the country that just two years before had – at least apparently – been equally split, would give an advantage of more than 12 points to the centre-right coalition, even though the victory of PdL was widely regarded as a foregone conclusion (Sani, 2008).